Japan's population is heading to 0

it's quite an eerie feeling to walk through  these streets because you don't see anybody   you don't hear any cars you don't see anything  and most of the places have just been closed way   more people are dying in this country than being  born a country that is closing up kindergartens   and housing cares are increasing and if nothing  changes Japan could eventually just not exist if   you kind of extrapolate on the numbers it's going  to happen when you actually look at these numbers   you see why they say that Japan could disappear  schools are shutting down elementary schools   even junior high schools have been shut down one  two three four kids in a class on the right is a   high school that has even shut down the past 10  years it starts with the small towns and cities   towns will die cities will die the gap between  deaths and births is getting bigger in Japan   every city is going down Japan's population  fell by more than half a million people last   year imagine if that happens every year so what  happens when you have so many people leaving   what does that mean for infrastructure for public  services hospitals schools and just look at this   chart which shows Japan's population projected  decline the country will go from being the 11th   most populous country in the world to one day  there will be less people in Japan than the   state of New Jersey only when Elon Musk tweeted  Japan went ballistic and the government just kind   of freaked out Elon Musk is warning Japan will  cease to exist this is such a common sight you   have so many abandoned stores like this across the  city I'm visiting abandoned towns and interviewing   government officials and we are going to reuse  the people at going out Japan has a huge elderly   population and it's home to the longest living  people this is what a city hall looks like when   over a third of your population is over the age  of 65. many young Japanese today don't want to   get married or have babies longer working hours  you don't meet anybody there's no romance so what   happens when a town like this just completely  ceases to exist and is a smaller population   actually a problem well yes I see depopulation  is a problem decreasing the birth rate means   decreasing the number of Labor population drinking  labor force has significant consequences GDP will   decline even more in addition to shrinking the  economy it puts a massive strain on the country if   labor population decreases you have to support  elderly people so the burden gets bigger and   bigger this is Tony Elementary School and this  is kind of uh an example of what happens when   we don't find kind of reason or reuse purpose for  elementary schools Jeff is a father of two living   in hakone it's only about an hour or so outside  of Tokyo but it couldn't feel more different than   one of the world's most crowded cities about  10 years ago this Elementary School shut down   completely because there weren't enough students  a lot of those children's clothes have also just   kind of been shut down or combined as well a kid  growing up here might have more elderly friends   than friends their own age you have empty  classrooms and what kind of an interesting   initiative my school took is the elementary school  is four floors they moved all the kids up to the   top three floors because there were so many empty  classrooms and they used the first floor as kind   of a community space for kind of the elderly in  the neighborhood the kids in this neighborhood   that would normally be zoned for this school now  have to go to another one and in some cases that   could mean a 45 minute drive finding kindergartens  and preschools is quite a challenge for a lot   of adults as well it would have been nice to  have kind of a bigger Community more kids to   play around with it's so crazy growing up myself  in the west coast of the United States there's   always more population there's always new schools  being built new homes being built so the idea of   a community a school in elementary school that  just didn't have enough students to the point   where it had to completely shut down it's crazy  Jeff is an exception see most people in Japan   are moving to bigger cities for more opportunities  Tokyo is a wonderful place but as you can imagine   it's really busy not a lot of green I wanted to  kind of expose them to more nature kind of less   structures a new initiative will pay parents  more than seven thousand dollars per kid to   leave Tokyo especially kind of the transformation  and kind of work styles for a lot of people a lot   of it can be done in the office and then commute  time is in Japan It's Not Unusual to be an hour   an hour and a half One Way commute time but the  truth is it's like the chicken or the egg see if   a town has less people and activities you don't  want to move there and if people aren't moving   there well it'll only get more and more isolated  what's really common is you'll have people here   in the 60s who've invested into raising their kids  owning an open a place and the kind of the suburbs   with the kids understanding in their 20s and 30s  we'll want to move out to the big city establish   their own lives and then don't feel obliged or  want to come back and then that's where kind of   the abandoned in homes problems comes in you end  up having towns with a lot of elderly people in   a restaurant like this you won't see any young  workers in fact you'll see much older employees   another thing I notice is many abandoned homes in  fact Japan has millions of them so you can see I   mean a lot of these places have signs they were  businesses they were open for business and now   all you see is either their clothes or they're  abandoned entirely with young people moving to   cities for better jobs there's a huge amount of  homes just sitting empty with no one wanting to   buy or live in them they're on the rise there  are many there are government initiatives to   create what are called kind of abandoned home  Banks where they can be registered but one of   the big challenges these local administrations  for Town Offices or city offices have is number   one finding who actually owns them a lot of times  even if they are passed away finding the children   or who actually has the rights to those homes is  also very difficult a closed business a closed   business a business that also just has kind  of a negatively compounding effect in terms   of revitalization whether it be Community spirit I  meet a local agent who's trying to revitalize the   town and encouraging people to open up a business  well she's always she's taking a lot of kind of   abandoned houses and kind of introduced businesses  so why is Japan's birth rate declined so dramatic   I'm in my 40s now our fathers kind of built Japan  Inc so they were gone after we fell asleep so we   wouldn't see them at all they had the kind of  Samurai Bushido spirit that were fighting for   the company and that has slowly changed I think  that's our generation now is kind of a generation   that kind of missed out on that relationship maybe  is trying to make up for that people saw their   parents overworked sacrificing a lot to work and  raise a family but the new generation is rebelling   against that it's a big economic investment that  I think even Japanese people are more interested   in maybe spending on themselves just a little bit  more than back in the day Japan wants to encourage   people to have babies so they're giving money to  new moms but many experts say that it's a losing   strategy and to really fix this problem it will  need to allow more immigrants to come and also   accelerate robots in the workplace but more on  that later I meet a professor outside of Tokyo to   understand what this all means for Japan's future  shrinking population shrinking labor force and   aging population have negative impact on both  sides of the economy on the demand side of the   economy so it means consumption households more  elderly people it means less consumption Japan was   the second largest economy in the world but it was  surpassed by China about 10 years ago but to stay   a large economy it will need to produce goods and  services and people here need to spend money they   already have houses they no need to change their  cars they married already so they expenditures   and the expenses on consumption is much lower but  the trend of Disappearing towns is nothing new in   fact I'm taking a train to wakayama it's outside  of Osaka the population here has been declining   for almost 30 years I go to its City Hall to  understand just how bad the problem is here so   I just input that data from the city hall and this  is really concerning more people are dying than   being born and more people are moving out than  are moving in but what's really interesting when   you crunch the numbers is you see that yeah it's  nothing new there are a lot more deaths than there   are birth but the scary part here is that the  gap between deaths and births is getting bigger   a simple chart like this and it's no wonder why so  many people are really concerned about the future   of Japan over a third of the population here is  over the age of 65. where you have such a high   percentage of Elders roaming around the city not  just going about their day to day but many of them   still working I'm here during an election season  and I meet a candidate who is hoping to attract   more people to move here we are going to use the  people at going out University will get some young   people from the outside City those young people  are will I think I'm working in this city so   and they in this city population will get growing  during his interview he said he's very optimistic   he wants wakayama to thrive he's excited about the  upcoming colleges and universities and he said he   told me he thinks wakayama is going to grow the  population is going to grow and while that sounds   great that might be wishful thinking because  the numbers don't lie this is such a common   sight you have so many abandoned swords like this  across the city you can definitely tell that the   infrastructure was built for way more people it  gives it this really weird Eerie Sensation that   it's somewhat of a ghost town just take a street  like this you have this as kind of an abandoned   shop over here I don't know what that was but  over here you have a brand new sandwich shop   and it seems to be booming it seems to be doing  pretty well there are people going in and out   but admittedly it is kind of random and you wonder  like how a place like that can survive it's about   three o'clock on a Thursday and most of these  shops are just completely vacant or shut down   this to me says it all this to me says a lot about  what's happening in this city a lot about the   economy and and this is the representation you see  many elders and a declining population you have to   wonder how a place like this can stay open it's  an ice cream shop they sell waffles they sell ice   cream they're kind of off the beaten path I mean  you don't have foot traffic you don't make money   and when you don't make money you can't stay in  business and when you can't stay in business you   leave this restaurant behind me is only open for  dinner from six to nine that's three hours many   of the businesses that do exist in the city are  closed a lot of the times I've seen coffee shops   that are closed all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays  or a restaurant that's only open Friday Saturday   Sunday this is because you have a lack of demand  there's not a lot of customers it's also hard to   find people to work so what other options do you  have but to be open for a few hours here a few   hours there it's become fairly common to take an  abandoned building demolish it and then just put a   parking lot here because there is more use to park  cars there than for anything else and what about   the people who do stay here I mean they're the  ones kind of fighting for its existence and its   future but even many of the young young people I  meet here tell me that they want to move they want   to go to Osaka they want to go to Tokyo where the  big city is where the action is I want to move to   somewhere because actually I gonna change my job  I want to be an illustrator so even though the   population is going down here he tells me that  the Coffee Culture is getting quite popular and   I meet a hotel and Cafe owner who's also quite  optimistic our company Misha is to revitalize   this area despite Japan being a rich country with  a strong economy it has a higher debt to GDP ratio   than Venezuela or Lebanon and this government debt  is causing a bigger crisis to the low birth rate   crisis see with fewer babies being born and more  people getting old the government has to spend a   lot of money on pensions health care and social  support which makes it increase its debt almost   one third of the Japanese government budget is for  the Social Security since there are fewer working   folks to pay taxes while the government struggles  to bring in enough money and they'll have to   decide do they spend their money supporting the  elderly or encouraging young families one third   of the budget is going to elderly people so if  you don't have enough younger population if you   don't have enough working population you don't  have enough taxpayers to finance the government   budget there's going to be a reckoning day for  Japanese debt at some point the debt to GDP ratio   in Japan there's no comparison around the world  there's only so long you can have the Central Bank   buy buy up your own banknotes that will also  endangering the future of the pension system   in Japan which is very serious it's kind of scary  to think what that's going to look like but to be   able to navigate that economic turmoil that will  have to come at some point is kind of hopefully my   kids will have the skills and abilities to kind of  navigate that in the future for Japan to be saved   there are three changes that could happen the  first is to increase the number of women having   babies in Japan and to do this they need to give  more incentives but a lot of those efforts are   just not working 50 000 Japanese yen to give birth  to one child's about equivalent of maybe four   thousand dollars they should be paying pregnant  women and make it more helpful and supporting   environment they're doing what they can do there's  a certain line in terms of what responsibility   they have what kind of pressure they can give to  the individual they can incentivize them through   economic bonuses but how much does a couple  hundred dollars do for a family over 20 years   the second one is to allow more immigrants so  about two percent of Japan's population are   immigrants but compare that to the US where  around 14 of the population are immigrants   in Germany which is 17 immigration is the way  to handle more jobs than there is for people   so many people gonna be against allowing so  many immigration because Japanese is you know   so normal culture it's not very common to see  foreigners there are several reasons behind   this so one reason is social reason cultural  reasons Japan used to be very closed country   toward foreigners people are very worried about  integration in the Japanese Society it's more   assimilation rather than kind of an Embrace  of different cultures Japan is easing some   of its restrictions and actually giving out  more visas for high-skilled workers to move   here but despite these initiatives the country  Still Remains very isolated from new cultures   it's a mentality geographically as well we're not  connected to any other country so there's no easy   way to get in or out of Japan the third solution  is to increase robots and have them take on more   jobs one solution to operational decreasing is I  think it's robot or using original intelligence by   increasing robots into society it will make Japan  more efficient so imagine robots in the service   industry you're helping take care of the elderly  or in Industrial Automation whatever happens the   government will need to take drastic action we  need reforms for example reforms regarding the   working population increasing the retirement age  bringing more females as a labor force accepting   more migrants from other countries and so on if  you let the economy shrink so it means that you   will have a small economy that majority of  your population are retired and this small   portion of younger generation they wouldn't  tolerate to pay for these huge Social Security   pension and so on but will Japan turn into a  poor country government wouldn't have enough   budget for developing infrastructure paying  for the education for military purposes and   so on back in wakayama I can't stop thinking  about how a story like this ends you have to   wonder what a city like wakayama looks like in  10 years or maybe even five years when you have   such a large percentage that are graying that are  old that are just not living much longer so far   it's apparent that 12 people left the town six  people died the government data here is really   quite thorough they even put on the front page  there was a 2.1 percent increase in garbage being   collected which if you think about it it's kind of  an exciting sign because you need people to create   garbage the population declining Japan needs  to preserve a lot of its culture I don't know   how the government's going to do it will drastic  changes be made what happens to these abandoned   homes or will Japan just one day completely cease  to exist without young people moving here without   new blood without new babies what is a society  what is a city is it just return back to Nature [Music]

Channel: Uptin

Views: 637,168

Keywords: uptin, uptin saiidi, uptin cnbc, cnbc international, cnbc, wsj, bloomberg, business insider, cheddar, why is japan's population decreasing, why is japan so rich, why is japan economy stagnant, why japan's population is still declining, japan population decline, japan population crisis, japan population decline documentary, will japan go extinct, will japan collapse, japan birth rate crisis, japan birth rate decline, japan elderly population, japan immigrant, is japan dying, wakayama

Id: LiVWaQNh9lw

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023